Читать книгу Perspectives on Morality and Human Well-Being - Syed Nawab Haider Naqvi - Страница 11
ОглавлениеThe analysis presented in this book offers three perspectives – i.e., the ‘secular-normative’, the Judaeo-Christian and the Islamic – on the likely impact of morality on individual behaviour and human well-being. These views are in some respects similar and complementary and in other respects contrasting and competitive. However, the points of similarity between them are no less important than their differences. It may be useful to recount them briefly. (a) Moral values held by individuals in society do make a significant difference to their social, political and economic behaviour, and that without them individuals will live precariously, anxiously and vulnerably. (b) It is not at all irrational for individuals to act morally and with regard to the concern of others rather than be utterly self-centred, selfish and insensitive to the collective good. (c) Human well-being is enhanced neither by maximising social welfare in the neo-classical sense of achieving a Pareto-optimal state nor by maximising the sum-total of individual ‘utilities’. (d) To elicit the individual’s commitment to collective good, it should be possible to evaluate the moral credentials of a society in terms of some noncontroversial, fair, and visible principles of social justice – i.e., an equality of economic, political, and social conditions between members of society, the priority of the needs of the least-privileged in society, and equal capabilities of individuals to convert monetary gains into their happiness and well-being. But beyond these points of similarity, the three perspectives differ, even clash. Thus, the secular analysis would not agree that moral behaviour becomes necessarily more compelling when guided by an internalised sense of obligation which only religion induces in individuals, that human well-being flows both from material and spiritual well-springs, and that material advancements can be consolidated on the foundations of religious spirituality. Furthermore, it would caution against an overemphasis by religious ethical thought on the sufficiency of moral behaviour to generate enough resources for poverty alleviation. The reason is that moral hazard, assurance and coordination problems prevent voluntary, altruistic individual behaviour from making a wholesome contribution to his/her well-being. Also, secular moral theories systematically maintain that individual morality (a sense of good and bad) is autonomously determined, independently of religious beliefs; while religious morality would insist that a deepening of the human perception of good and bad has been an integral part of the strengthening of his/her religious consciousness. It is contended in this book that, historically, religious thought has been strengthened, rather than weakened, by the process of secularisation;1 and that secular morality need not be antithetical to religious moral thinking. What can bring both the ethical systems together is an uncompromising insistence on rational thought, which steers clear of doctrinaire rigidity. To be useful, both should focus on the vital problems of human existence – especially, growth, distributional justice and poverty.
The brief analysis that follows recaptures the highlights of the above-mentioned perspectives on morality and human well-being, which are discussed at length in the ensuing chapters.
An economic calculus suffused with some solid ethical concerns should be an attractive alternative to unrepentant self-interest maximisation because “the morality of economic agents influences their behaviour and hence influences economic outcomes” [Hausman and McPherson (1993); p. 673]. Before proceeding further, it would be useful to answer the following question: why has mainstream (neo-classical) economics been so uncompromisingly insistent on keeping economics and ethics separate, indeed divorced, even at the cost of significantly blinkering the economist’s moral vision of the economic universe?
i) The Separation of Economics from Ethics?
Lionel Robbins (1935) pronounced, without remorse, that economics and ethics are irreconcilably divorced because: “it does not seem logically possible to associate the two studies [economics and ethics] in any form but mere juxtaposition” (p. 148). In particular, economists need not entertain considerations of social justice or be concerned for the poor for the simple reason that doing so would be irrational! Instead, the self-interest principle is advertised as the only one that is “rational”. This somewhat counter-intuitive result flows from the efficiency-oriented Pareto-optimality principle – which depicts a situation in which the utility (welfare) of everyone cannot be increased without reducing the utility (welfare) of someone else. The two celebrated fundamental theorems of welfare economics prove that, given some stringent conditions, Pareto-optimality and competitive equilibrium imply each other. Whence follows that the competitive solutions – i.e., those produced by unfettered markets – are “unimprovable”. In other words, state intervention is redundant because it cannot improve upon market solutions. Indeed, it is positively harmful because it imposes an avoidable “excess cost” on the economy. No moral problem arises because neo-classical economics does not recognise any conflict between members of a society; and in its ‘eyes’ the equal and unequal outcomes are equally preferable. Hence, the Pareto-optimality principle is distributionally neutral. It further decrees that the rich could have everything as long as improving the conditions of the poor does not require cutting into their pleasures; and that the market solutions need not be equitable or mutually advantageous in any sense of the term. Since only efficiency considerations are deemed “rational”, it should not be a matter of concern for economists if observing the Pareto-optimality rule means breaking a few moral principles because the broken moral rules must have been “irrational” by definition. Obviously, there is little room in this rarefied world of rationality for maximising social good on logical or moral grounds – except to the extent of holding out the possibility of “distortion-free” compensation that is never carried out in practice.
This unifocal concentration on efficiency has been bolstered by libertarian moral-right theories [Hayek (1960); Nozick (1974); J. Buchanan (1975; 1985); and many others], which assign priority to individual liberty with such intensity as to exclude any reasonable trade-off between individual liberty and all other socially desirable objectives (e.g., narrowing inequities, reducing poverty and human deprivation) in which normally sane people believe. The reason: state intervention, even to help the poor, invites totalitarianism: “A society in which the position of the individuals was made to correspond to human ideas of moral merit would … be the opposite of a free society” [Hayek (1960); p. 97]. Nozick goes further and lays down that any redistribution (“patterning”) of income and wealth is an unacceptable encroachment on the individual’s virtually unlimited right to private property including those in the means of production, i.e., the property which is acquired by observing the principles of justice in “initial acquisition” and in “transfer”. Even for the government to aid the poor (by coercing the rich to do so) would be a violation of moral rights because the poor do not have a moral right to aid!2 Hence, the prescription for a minimal government, i.e., that which does no more than safeguard the “negative freedoms” of individuals from encroachment on their right to hold legally acquired private property. In the same vein is Buchanan’s valorisation of unfettered markets as providing the best guarantees against the violation of individual liberty because only these (run on the self-interest principle) can diffuse concentration of economic power in any form. Whence follows, that any interference with the working of the free markets is undesirable on moral, political and economic grounds. However, some redistributive activity is allowed at the constitution-making stage in a manner that ensures the impartiality of the decisions made at this stage to win unanimity about these decisions [Buchanan and Tullock (1962)]. But, on this view, once this deed is done people can go about their business of selfish profit maximisation undisturbed by the distant rumblings of egalitarian reform.
ii) Uniting Ethics with Economics
However, notwithstanding the above-mentioned arguments, a strong sentiment for reuniting ethics with economics has now become mainstream. Firstly, there is the plain question of human survival in a society devoid of social and personal morality. As Russell (1954) states: “Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality life has no value” (p. 28). Secondly, treating self-interest and “rational” behaviour as synonymous is hard to defend, even logically. Thirdly, there are two major problems with the view that individuals acting in their self-interest also maximise social welfare. (a) In a large number of real-life cases, e.g., public goods must be provided, or markets are missing or collapse completely [Naqvi (2002)]. (b) This view does not hold in the context of large groups within a society. Thus, “even if all members in a large group are rational and self-interested, and would gain if, as a group, they acted to achieve their common interest or objective, they will still not voluntarily act to achieve that common or group interest” [Olson (1971); p. 2].
Fourthly, the superiority (indeed, invincibility) of the selfinterest principle cannot be established just by the demonstration that observing moral principles does not maximise individual welfare. For instance, even though it may be in somebody’s interest to break one’s promises, keeping one’s promises will still be regarded by most reasonable people as both moral and rational. Whence follows that while it may not “be at all absurd that maximization of self-interest is not irrational, at least not necessarily so, but to argue that anything other than maximizing self-interest must be irrational seems altogether extra-ordinary” [Sen (1987); p. 15]. In particular, it is illegitimate to dismiss a moral concern for others as irrational behaviour on the ground that only universal selfishness is a sure sign of rationality. In the real world, “the plurality of motivations is the rule rather than the exception, and one would be hard put to prove that either mere self-interest or pure altruism explains a large enough segment of social or individual action” [Naqvi (2002); p. 180]. Indeed, even historically, linking the spectacular success of capitalism in modern times only to the unrestrained working of the self-interest principle would be a vast underestimation of the role of the so-called capitalistic ethic. The fact is that it has always been a symbiosis of self-interest and morality that moved the world. Many empirical studies show that, for instance, in the case of Japan – the most illustrious example of economic success in the post-War era based on a freeenterprise system – qualities like group loyalty, good will, sympathy, respect for others have played at least as much a decisive role as self-interest maximisation may have done [Morishima (1982)].
Fifthly, beyond the libertarian’s ubiquitous selfishness, there is a whole world of sane people who recognise that ethical influences do shape human behaviour. Thus, for instance, Harsanyi’s (1977) “equiprobability model for moral value judgment”, requires individuals to possess not only personal preferences but moral preferences as well. These moral preferences “guide his thinking in those – possibly very rare – moments when he forces a special impersonal and impartial attitude, that is, a moral attitude, upon himself” (p. 635). Rawls (1971; 1999) argues for a wider informational base to measure human happiness than the self-interest principle would demand. The Justice-as-Fairness and the Difference principles emphasise the need to select those institutions which maximise the supply of “social primary goods” which every individual wants whatever else he/she may want (i.e., “rights and liberties, and opportunities, income and wealth, and bases of self respect”) to carry out his/her plans in life, subject to the principle that the needs of the least-privileged in the society are met first” (pp. 78-81). Sen (1992) regards Rawlsian social primary goods as instruments of achieving economic well-being. The real aim is to attain valuable “functionings” (being educated, being healthy, being free, etc.) and the “capability” to achieve them freely. The latter relates to the individual’s freedom to convert primary goods and resources into personal happiness, which is the proper “end” of economic activity. The capability approach is capacious enough “to take note of, inter alia, utilitarianism’s interest in human wellbeing, the libertarianism’s involvement with the processes of choice and the freedom to act and the Rawlsian theory’s focus on the individual liberty and on resources needed for substantive freedoms” [Sen (1999b); p. 86]. Sen’s approach forms the basis of the UNDP’s Human Development Research Programme. The basic moral insight here is that material plenitude need not always translate into human happiness, certainly not to the same extent. To this end, the search for human happiness does not stop when incomes have risen enough; rather, it takes reorganising the structure of property rights on the basis of justice, and making adequate provisions for greater education, healthcare and public goods of various kinds. In a more fundamental sense, the UNDP’s research programme goes beyond Pareto-optimality rule’s insistence on only distributionally-neutral efficient solutions and the Nozickian exclusive focus on the individual’s (unlimited) moral right to private property etc. [see Naqvi (2002)]. It does not need extended ethical lecturing to convince normal people that only a society in which the major social institutions are based on justice and where the needs of the poor and the needy are adequately met is worth supporting. A state of bliss is not reached without sympathy for others (which may be referred to as enlightened self-interest) as well as a moral commitment to help others (which is beyond the reach of self-interest) even if that means accepting a cut in one’s own welfare.
Finally, an unyielding insistence on self-interest (which implies an unbounded admiration for unfettered markets) is an extraordinary limitation on the economists’ moral vision because that means excluding from it a whole range of ethical values – i.e., justice, fair play, and the quest for equality – that have, historically, moved people to action. Also, it prevents the government from doing anything about inequality, poverty and an undersupply of ‘public goods’, within nations and between nations and all that makes social progress illusory. Ill-rooted in facts, such insistence also defies common sense. It is, therefore, best to brush aside libertarianism and accept that an active public policy is necessary (though not sufficient) to create the right conditions to maximise the happiness and well-being of a diverse humanity. What is certain is that amoral market solutions produced by self-interest maximisation do not play a central role in a comprehensive agenda for enhancing human well-being.
III. Religion, Ethics, and Economics
Given, then, the ethical underpinnings of economic motivation, the next issues to consider are where to find the ethical principles – e.g., impartiality, justice, a deeply felt sense of commitment and social responsibility, especially to the least-privileged in society (or the “underclass”, as Gunnar Myrdal put it) – that command widespread and universal (voluntary) support; and how to operationalise them as major regulators of economic activity? There have been influential economists [e.g., Weber (1905); Tawney (1937); Viner (1978)] who regard Christian ethics to be the driving force of capitalism; and some others [Tinbergen (1985)] who consider it an important force in the development of (Western) socialism. Earlier, Adam Smith’s (1776) individualism clearly presumed that the socially beneficial working of selfinterest was “subject to built-in restraints derived from morals, religion, custom, and education” [Coats (1971); p. 9]; and John Stuart Mill (1874) regarded religion as “a more cunning sort of police” (p. 415). It has been stressed that religion has, historically, performed a useful (secular) function, whose ‘utility’ has increased, not diminished, with the passage of time. The fact is that, with the recognition of the ethical connection of economics, it becomes difficult to deny a positive (functional) role to religion – e.g., to improve the working of an individualist economic system like capitalism.
i) The Functional and Constitutive Roles of Religion
However, on balance, the economic role of religion has been devalued in the West. The general attitude is that religion, though privately vital, is indifferent, if not altogether irrelevant, when it comes to devising rules for the conduct of economic and social policy. True, ethical behaviour may be vital to producing a greater degree of social cohesion; yet it is asserted that the principles governing it are derivable from reason (even common sense) alone. Secular morality is, therefore, rated higher than religion-based morality. Thus, in the Mill’s quote cited above, religion is seen as a useful “supplement to human laws”. (Oddly enough, he sees religion as operating mainly through the feeling of self-interest (p. 411).) Russell (1954) forcefully rejects the relevance of religion in the formation of modern ethical philosophy: “the rightness and wrongness of an act depends upon its probable consequences, and not upon its belonging to some class of acts labelled virtuous or sinful without regard to their effects” (p. 138). Joan Robinson (1973) generally asserts the superiority of secular ethical values to religious values. But this view is more of an affirmation of the superiority of secular ethics rather than an assertion of the overriding role of religion in human affairs, or accepting it as a source of ethical values. In particular, this view amounts to a repudiation of the position that religion per se has been the dominant force in the evolution of a universally accepted code of ethics. However, there have been some respectable exceptions to this widely held ‘secularistic view’ of religion. In his account of the rise of capitalism in the West, Tawney (1937) could report that “the line of division between the spheres of religion and secular business…is shifting” (p. 18); and that a crucial factor in the progress of Western capitalism was Calvin’s reinterpretation of Christian religious values which ended the “long estrangements” between the duties of religion and the call of business (p. 238). Tinbergen (1985) argues that “new spiritual foundations rooted in religion are required to repair the damage being done by the cultural crisis to human happiness”. This is because “far from being an ‘opium of the people’ religion...is a necessary source of inspiration for developing an individual’s spiritual and moral potential” (p. 178). Religion is seen here as directly contributing to human happiness by inducing greater spirituality in people, and not only because it may lead to a higher level of economic activity. This view seems to have historical antecedents as well; which is that moral values become decisive in moulding economic behaviour only when these are presented as flowing from religious beliefs. Fogel (2000) attributes “Four Ethical Awakenings” in the United States (from 1730 to the present time) to the work of religious people (the Social Gospellers) who believed that “the value and truth of religion were shown by the capacity to create God’s kingdom on earth rather than in the hereafter. The essence of religion became the elimination of poverty and inequality” (p. 121).
ii) Limits to Voluntarism
Religion, by virtue of its unique system of reward and punishment which religious (even irreligious) people accept without question, acts as “a solvent for the needs of explicit or internalized social cooperation” [Hirsch (1977); p. 138]; and it encourages self-interested individuals to act for society. The reason is that, without coercion and/or invisible religious sanctions, voluntary cooperation cannot meet society’s demands for scarce altruistic resources which will, in turn, raise the “policing cost” to keep the free-riders in check. Also, most ethical values (e.g., honesty, trust, etc.) that help the economy work more efficiently and equitably are public goods that are necessary inputs into much social output. But the former will be undersupplied if the discharge of social obligations is left entirely to the self-interested individual’s good sense. To see the nature of the problem, let us consider the feasibility of leaving it all to the individual to discharge his/her social responsibility to aid the poor voluntarily. A moment’s reflection should show that the size of the charitable contributions will, at best, be minimal. The source of the problem is the phenomenon of free-riding (which, in extreme cases, will break the horse’s back) if the required contributions to aid funds are not enforced (by the state and out of fear of religious sanctions), and if these efforts are uncoordinated. In such situations, the altruistic contributor may find that either a sufficient number of people will contribute even if only I do not contribute; or that other people will not contribute even if I contribute. If all or most contributors reason thus, then, given that charitable giving is a cost, not enough funds will be forthcoming to finance the charity in question. A related phenomenon is the assurance problem, which leads to similar results: it is that, even assuming that the contributing individual is not a free-rider, he may nevertheless not contribute, unless he is reasonably assured that many will contribute to charity, on the grounds that doing so is morally and socially irresponsible. It follows, then, that “the laudable desire to be effectively beneficent may be self-defeating, where coercion (secular or religious) is absent. So even in a society of morally upright, altruistic [individuals], the impulse to collective beneficence may be impotent” [Allen Buchanan (1985); p. 73].
IV. Islam, Ethics, and Economics
i) General Motivation
Western ideas about the functional and constitutive roles of religion, i.e., its positive contribution to material and spiritual prosperity, are valuable. No less important are the central ethical notions emphasised by (secular) normative public-choice theories: the need to create well-ordered societies based on justice and fairness; the importance of institutions and processes that guarantee the fairness of the basic principles of justice for winning the voluntary support of the people; the necessity to meet the needs of the least-privileged in society on a priority basis, etc. These insights should help formulate the Islamic response to modern social, political and economic challenges. In return, Islam’s own highly original contributions should reinforce, even correct, some of these ideas and insights. Most worthy of mention in this context are the following: Islam abolishes the distinction between this-worldly and that-worldly pursuits and concerns and links welfare (falāḥ) in this world to that in the hereafter; spiritual ascension is firmly related to doing good to fellow human beings, especially to the poor, the needy and the weak; the act of giving is not regarded as charity but the right of the poor to receive their share in the wealth of the rich; the individual’s right of ownership is only relative to Allah’s ownership, which is to emphasise that he is only a trustee of his wealth and can spend of it only in prescribed ways.3 A linkage between religious callings and mundane matters achieve two objectives simultaneously: it strengthens altruism significantly in running efficiently and equitably an essentially individualistic economy, and it minimises the free-riding and assurance problems. To some extent the internalisation of moral values which flows from regarding religion as a ‘living reality’ can be observed in Muslim societies, which are admittedly no more than mere pale shadows of the Islamic ideals. Thus, for instance, Muslims normally give away large amounts of money as zakāt, khums, ṣadaqāt, and a lot more to help the poor and the needy, even when they may evade ‘secular’ taxes. As a result, the differential between the rich and poor is less in Muslim countries than in non-Muslim countries (see Chapter 6). But Islam’s contribution to the debate about the role of religion goes well beyond its potential to increase material well-being. The emphasis here is that religion is an internally consistent and a complete way of life that provides guidance about “individual and social, material and moral, economic and political, legal and cultural, national and international challenges that human societies must respond to” [Ahmad (1976); p. 37]. Islam considers religion as constitutive of individual well-being and happiness, an end to be desired for its own sake. It should strengthen individual’s economic and social roles when moral values become deeply internalised in man’s consciousness so that both the mind and the soul take on a quiet but magical luminosity. In Islam’s unified world-view, religion defines man/woman’s entire personality as geared to achieving a higher social purpose, of which economic pursuits are only one, though a significant, element. Thus, he/she is given the exalted status of Allah’s vicegerent on earth, endowed with a free will (that guarantees human freedom as part of a Divine design) which is informed by a sense of social responsibility that links the individual to the collectivity and encourages him/her to do good to fellow human beings. It may be noted that, in the unified Islamic perspective, social responsibility is not allowed to degenerate into human bondage. Rather it goes with substantive human freedoms, which increase by a heightened sense of individual and social commitment, and decrease by cupidity and greed. This has a far-reaching policy implication: for Islamic moral values to become a source of social binding, Muslim societies must be reorganised on the basis of human freedom, social justice, and a commitment to help the poor and the needy by restoring to them from the wealth of the rich what is morally and legally theirs as a matter of right. Thus, in a society where wide inequalities of income and wealth prevail, and in which hunger, starvation and human deprivation is rife, individual freedom and social responsibility lose meaning – all of which is ẓulm and a direct defiance of the Divine principles of al-‘adl wa al-iḥsān. Even more important, such a defiance is not taken lightly in Islam; instead it is roundly condemned as a denial of faith itself!
The cumulative effect of Islam’s ‘integrationist’ economic-ethical vision is that moral powers – i.e., an overarching sense of justice, freedom and responsibility – come to be shared widely and reinforce each other in a virtuous circle. In it, ‘rationality’ includes a consideration of our obligations and ideals as well as our interests and advantages so that the demand on scarce altruistic resources does not become unrealistically excessive. The individuals’ urge to act out of altruism is extolled, but Islam does not envisage a society of only altruistically motivated individuals, in which there are no trade-offs between the conflicting demands on interests, obligations, and passions. At any rate, such would be a morally irrelevant concept because a society in which all, or even most, of its people act only out of altruism is beyond justice, i.e., one in which, in the absence of injustice, there is no demand for justice!4 But Islam does recognise human greed and love for wealth even though these traits of human nature do not serve as an oriflamme of social and economic forces. In other words, Islam’s recognition of self-interest objectives does not imply a claim about the morality of self-interest behaviour. Moral values that entail adverse consequences – inequality, poverty, and social deprivation – cannot form a part of any valid moral philosophy.
ii) The Principles of Islamic Reform
There are, at least, four guiding principles of Islamic reform. Firstly, without a proactive public policy, free-riding and assurance problems will choke off the supply of beneficence even in societies of morally upright and altruistic people. But, Islam does not envisage that such rightly guided people will be in an overwhelming majority in real-world societies. In other words, voluntary economic behaviour in a morally reformed Muslim society will not be radically very different from the very imperfect ones now in existence. Secondly, Islam’s comprehensive vision of religion encompasses both its instrumental and constitutive roles: its contribution to human happiness is to restore the balance between the call of the flesh and the beckoning of the soul. That being the case, public policy had better look at these aspects of religion as connected with one another and mutually reinforcing. Thus, for instance, greater political, social and economic individual freedoms enrich human lives and make them aware of their social responsibilities. However, the balancing of human freedom and responsibility implies that: a centrally controlled economy, in which individual freedoms are denied, is contrary to Islamic vision. And so is laissez faire capitalism in which economic injustice and poverty are widespread and where the resulting economic unfreedoms greatly compromise the effective use of political and social freedoms by men and women.
Thirdly, the Divine nature of the broad Islamic message does not provide any Divine guarantee of the success of the specific implementational strategies designed to address the problems of real-life Muslim societies, but the former does increase the probability of the latter if the nature of Islamic reform is correctly understood and efficiently implemented. While it is left to humankind to follow it or not, general Islamic ethical principles provide guidance to the Right Way. Hence the need for an egalitarian public policy which aims to redress the inequities of the system of rewards and incentives found in many (unjust) aristocratic, or feudal Muslim societies.
Fourthly, while Islamic ethical principles are universal, the traditional (Islamic) implementational strategies are not universal for the simple reason that the latter are limited by the constraints of time, space, the state of development and knowledge. By the same token, such strategies are no less prone to failure than those taken to implement a secular agenda. The general point is that any Islamic economic system, and the reforms undertaken within its parameters, are going to be as man/woman-made as any other existing economic system (i.e., capitalism, socialism) and as liable to failure. Its success will not be determined on a priori basis by its Divine origin, but will rather be evaluated empirically by its success in achieving the Divine purpose – which is to encourage economic and human development by raising the growth rate of per capita income on a sustained basis, universalising literacy and access to health care, minimising poverty, reducing inequalities of income and wealth, and rolling back the tide of human deprivation [Ahmad (1994); Naqvi (1994)]. However, success on this score will require, not a repetitive application of the remedies prescribed by Muslim sages in the distant past, but taking innovative initiatives informed by new knowledge. This is a road that Muslim societies have so far not taken, but it is only if they do so that the Islamic economic system will be voluntarily demanded by the Muslims themselves.
Bearing in mind these general principles, the following basic questions must be answered: how to translate Islam’s soaring idealism into a set of operational rules for application at theoretical and practical levels. At the theoretical level, it can be demonstrated that an Islamic economy (a theoretical construct) can be at least as efficient and equitable as any other economy; and that it can stand its ground as it “opens up, interacts, and competes with other economic systems” [Sirageldin (1995)]. This is the easier part of the problem which has been addressed elsewhere [Naqvi (1997)]. A more difficult task is to find a set of values based on Islam which can serve as a springboard for ethically motivated economic activity in a real-life Muslim society. At the practical level, making a choice of specific policies is going to be even more challenging. The answer to this challenge does not lie in merely reverting to a set of policies that are labelled Sharī’ah-compatible in the traditional sense.5 The problem is that, because of an informational gap of several centuries, those parts of Islamic Law which deal with social and economic issues have become frigid legal structures which do not vibrate with a sense of reality; nor do they reflect the basic objectives of Islamic Law (maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah), which are the repositories of Islamic ethics.6 But the problem is even more complicated; it is that these traditional maqāṣid too have become totally obsolete and out of touch with the tremendous advances made in the knowledge of ethical principles – especially those relating to the meaning and scope of the ideas of justice. These principles, therefore, must be recast to fill the informational gap noted above. This is especially true of the Islamic position on such vital issues as growth, human freedom, gender equality, etc., where Muslim societies have done exceptionally badly, both in relation to their own lofty ideals and relative to what non-Muslim countries have been able to achieve following their ethical ideals. The task of updating the Islamic Sharī’ah and the maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah and bringing them together into a virtuous circle of evolution is truly monumental; but it must now be taken up systematically.7
The central questions which the present study aims to answer, then are: how to create knowledge about the ends of an operational Islamic economic system and the means to achieve these ends, while keeping in view the modern advancements in economics and ethics; and weaving these diverse elements together in a manner which is logically sound, empirically verifiable, and operationally feasible – and yet religiously authentic? A systematic answer to these questions will help devise a set of rules that can serve as reference points for the creation of knowledge in the realm of Islamic economics, and not just for finding new arguments to prove the ‘unimprovability’ of traditional knowledge about Islamic law, ethics, and economics.
iii) Rules of Knowledge Creation
There are two basic rules to create knowledge about Islamic economics: (a) identify an irreducible and logically coherent system of ethical axioms which is an authentic representation of Islam’s consequentialist moral philosophy, and which adequately addresses the essential plurality of Islamic concerns about the individual’s life and society, and predicts new facts and possibilities for an Islamic economy. (b) Focus on understanding the nature of real-life Muslim societies, rather than of some utopian Islamic society, that may have existed in the distant past. This is because the existing Muslim societies, though no more than a pale shadow of their ideals (and which societies are exact replicas of their ideals?), are the only places where the Islamic principles can be implemented, even though some of these may have universal relevance as well.
On the basis of these rules we identify four fundamental axioms which are authentic representations of Islam’s moral vision, giving it concrete form, and providing an overarching analytical framework for deducing empirically falsifiable statements about Islamic economics: tawḥīd (unity); al-‘adl wa al-iḥsān (equilibrium); ikhtiyār (free will); and farḍ (responsibility).8 The unity axiom acts as a ‘unifier’ of all the constitutive elements of human life into a mutually consistent and supportive totality, in which economic and ethical aspects of life are inextricably linked with each other. The equilibrium axiom denotes an all-permeating social balance. It fixes the direction of change in the basic socio-economic structure of a society by setting up a just system of rewards and incentives, promotes peace and harmony that decides conflicting claims on economic resources on the basis of fairness and justice. The free will axiom defines (substantive) freedoms to make the choices that people have reason to value (e.g., to be literate, to be healthy, to be well-fed, to be politically free, etc.); and it also helps secure freedom from self-love, avarice and greed. These freedoms leave maximum space to engage in morally edifying social and economic activities. The responsibility axiom denotes a person’s moral commitment to improve the quality of social life, especially of the least-privileged in society, who have a prior right in the nation’s wealth to ensure that social harmony, rather than discord, flows from freedom. These axioms, in their fullness, generate new knowledge about the moral and economic aspects of human life and about the many ways in which the mundane and the spiritual dimensions and human well-being leaven each other to let individual genius flower and enhance social good. The claim is that these axioms illustrate the essentially pluralistic nature of Islamic ethics, and provide an adequate evaluative criteria to judge the working of an Islamic economic system in real-life Muslim societies. Above all, they define the Islamic moral vision of a good life, and spell out the basic organising principles of a distinct paradigm to organise human experiences and initiatives. There is nothing preordained or deterministic about this moral vision and its consequences. Indeed, it is meliorist in intent: that humankind can change the world for the better by observing the Right Path.
A few assertions can be made about the relevance of some of the (secular) economic and ethical principles briefly discussed in Section II above. Thus, for instance, Benthamite Utilitarianism (which emphasises the maximisation of total utility but does not worry about its distribution) and the Pareto-optimality principle (which rules out the possibility of improving upon competitive market solutions which are efficient, though not necessarily equitable) are not relevant in conceptualising the workings of the Islamic economic system. The reason being that these principles are totally insensitive to distributional problems and leave little room for a reformative public policy to redress distributive inequities, poverty and human deprivation. In particular, the selfinterest principle, which neo-classical economics regards as the hallmark of rational behaviour (one that worries only about efficient solutions) will find no more than a faint echo in the Islamic system because the latter defines economic rationality more broadly. In particular, the former’s contention that ethical behaviour is a sign of irrationality will be flatly denied in the Islamic system – indeed, it would be denied in any real life system that does not regard sanity as a moral crime. In the same vein, the libertarian moral-rights philosophy (which only recognises the individual’s unlimited moral right to private property and rules out any reformist redistribution of income and wealth, and which rejects the moral right of the poor to aid) is also contrary to the Islamic ethos. In sharp contrast, Islam insists on the prior moral (and legal) right of the poor on the wealth of the rich and recommends radical changes in the basic structure of property rights to meet these rights. However, broadly consistent with the Islamic ethical vision are the more reformist moral theories – e.g., the Rawlsian Justice-as-Fairness and the Difference principles and Sen’s Capability Calculus – which insist on social justice, recognise the prior claim of the poor in the wealth of the rich, and recommend a purposive social policy that is impartial with respect to its underlying principles and seeks the voluntary support of the people for its implementation.
Notes
1. It may be instructive to quote from Smith (1962): “In the European historical experience, which itself varied widely, the secularization process coexisted with an intensification of religiosity on the personal and popular levels…Religious beliefs and practice, as faith, intensified rather than declined during the secularization of the state...” (p. 272).
2. Hayek (1960) takes the same position: it is wrong “to suggest that those who are poor, merely in the sense that there are those in the same society who are richer, are entitled to a share in the wealth of the latter….” (p. 101; emphasis added).
3. Wilson (1997) in his excellent comparative study of Islam, Christianity and Judaism, points out that while Christianity urges the rich to help the poor, it does not go as far as saying that the poor have a right on the wealth of the rich (pp. 70-74). It may also be noted that the Islamic assertion that the poor have a right in the wealth of the rich directly contradicts the libertarians’ claim that the poor do not have a moral right in the wealth of the rich.
4. Rawls (1999) defines a society beyond justice as one “in which all can achieve their complete good, or in which there are no conflicting demands, and the wants of all fit together without coercion into a harmonious plan of activity” (p. 249).
5. Thus, for instance, it has been argued that since the profit-and-loss sharing (PLS) principle is the only one most recommended by the Sharī’ah, it alone must be the most efficient and equitable. But this is circular reasoning: it makes the desired efficiency and equity outcomes contingent on the adoption of the PLS principle, which is prejudged as the only one available which is Islamically just! However, as should not be entirely unexpected, there are both theoretical and empirical reasons why an ‘unrestricted’ PLS-only system is likely to be both inefficient and inequitable [Naqvi (2000)].
6. The problem noted in the text is a historical one. Rahman, F. (1980) notes: “…Islamic ethics proper, systematically based upon a genuine understanding of the purposes of the Qur’ān, did not develop until later in Muslim history…The leaders of the Sharī’a made practically no distinction between ethics and law…” (emphasis added; p. 239).
7. Chapra (2000) wisely remarks: “The increasing volume of literature on maqāṣid al-Sharī’ah is also a reflection of the realization that the taking of these into account is at least as important as the letter of the text” (p. 107). Also timely is his warning that “if the ‘ulamā’….react aggressively and harshly to even moderate forms of rational thinking, which are necessary for enabling fiqh to meet the challenges faced by the Muslim ummah, then adverse reaction might occur” (p. 105).
8. The power of reasoning in creating new Islamic knowledge has been duly recognised by modern Muslim religious scholars. Thus, Mustafa Zarqa has laid down: “whatever is against reason has no place in Islam” [cited in Chapra (2000); p. 102]. Kuran (1992) is right in complaining that some Muslim economists ignore the fact that, “like the doctrines they indict so harshly, Islamic economics rests on human reasoning and interpretation” (p. 70).
